If We Burn
by livingondaydreams
Summary: Her date is scarred and still bandaged but these are the best fireworks she has ever seen. :: AU - Instead of going to Ogygia, Percy lands near Mount Othrys and is captured. Angst galore.


**AN: Some good old 4am writing for you guys. The plot bunnies attacked when I was researching for a paper, and then all of a sudden I had opened a new document and I was writing about my OTP. Until four. And then, finally, the plot bunnies were satisfied. I love those things, but they kill me.  
>Oh, yeah. New pen name. <span>livingondaydreams<span> instead of StarlitReader.  
>Anyway... this is AU. Instead of going to Ogygia, Percy lands near Mount Othrys and is captured. So much angst. Oh, and yes. Title is a THG reference. <em>If we burn, you burn with us!<em> Enjoy and review!**

* * *

><p><strong>If We Burn<strong>

* * *

><p>Falling. He is falling from the sky. Fire.<p>

Cold, grey water. Surrounded by bubbles.

Darkness.

O-O-O-O

He feels like he is still on fire.

Black clouds, swirling and churning above him. Smooth pebbles against his back. They don't help the burning, burning, burning.

"Can we eat him?"

The second voice hesitates. "I dunno. He might be useful."

"In this state? He's already cooked and everything."

"Bring him up. _He_ can decide."

Rough clawed hands grab his arms, his charred skin, and he is gone.

O-O-O-O

Gone. He is gone. Not coming back. Never.

Hephaestus stares at her as she leaves and her legs carry her back and she hears his voice but it's not him and he is gone.

O-O-O-O

Echoing laughter brings him around. He knows that sound. His head hurts when he tries to place it.

"Well, it seems like our good friend Percy Jackson came to visit. He looks a little worse for wear, though." A pause. He knows that voice he knows that voice he _knows_ that voice—"Any idea what happened?"

Mumblings. The familiar voice says something else, but his head is pounding and he has to be on fire still because how else could it hurt this much?

A boot slams into his ribcage. It tears his skin. He lets a groan slip out and it feels like he's swallowed knives.

That laugh.

And then they drag him away.

O-O-O-O

She stumbles when she comes out of the rocks. They nearly shoot, bows at the ready, until they recognize her. She almost would've preferred to be killed.

Somebody runs over to her and tries to talk to her and all she can do is curl up against the rough stone and sob.

"Annabeth, you need to tell me what happened."

Behind him, he shouts for someone to get Chiron _now_.

Finally: "We—we separated. I don't know where Grover and Tyson are. And then the forge—Percy's dead."

Silence. Hooves. Blue sky. Hot chocolate, even though it's June. A quiet voice, and she has to explain everything.

O-O-O-O

Once she gets to the part where she ran away, she lets Chiron make his own assumptions. She can't talk anymore.

O-O-O-O

They carve his skin. It burns, it burns, it burns—

He can't scream anymore.

O-O-O-O

She decides that sea green and orange is the worst color combination possible.

Her eyes burn like his shroud, but she says, "He was probably the bravest friend I've ever had. He…" How can she even begin to explain him?

"He gave his life for me. And I don't think I'll ever forgive him for that."

The only sound is the crackle of the flames. The shroud turns black.

"I'll miss you, Percy."

They leave the amphitheater in silence. There is nothing left to say.

O-O-O-O

She goes back into the maze the next morning. Dawn. Only one person—one centaur—awake _(alive) _to see her off.

Darkness closes around her again.

Except this time three people are missing.

O-O-O-O

Golden eyes. A strange two-colored blade. The scythe never touches him—Kronos wants him alive—but the sight of it is disturbing. Wrong.

He breaks a few bones and then leaves.

O-O-O-O

Camp is in flames.

Daedalus is dead—killed by Kampê—so the maze has died with him. The enemies are gone, but so are too many campers; too many motionless bodies littering the bright green fields. Green and red and black.

She winces when she sees that Cabin Three is only so many crumbled stones. Her mother's cabin has a few windows smashed, but the damage is not too extensive. Ares has burned to the ground. The volleyball net is wrapped around Kampê's corpse.

That kid Nico's skeletons wander aimlessly, still looking for monsters to fight. Tyson—he and Grover found safely—and his Cyclopes move the bigger chunks of wreckage, but it makes little difference.

Destruction. Crying campers. Every cabin has lost at least one sibling. Nobody unharmed.

O-O-O-O

Judging from the maniacal laughing, he thinks the Titan is happy.

O-O-O-O

He needs to get out of here. Now.

O-O-O-O

Recovering, she realizes, is impossible. Half the camp is rubble. Everyone injured, grieving. Many dead.

They repair the Big House and the Hermes and Zeus cabins first. The three biggest buildings, and the gods have given their permission. Slowly they put the stones back together and replace wood siding and get some new windows, but something is missing. Vitality. Energy. Hope.

The battle has made one thing clear: they can't win this war.

O-O-O-O

Half a week later the train rattles on the tracks, jarring him out of his nightmare. Camp in flames. Everyone dead.

The businessman stares at him as if just seeing the ratty bloodied teenager in the corner, but then shrugs and keeps texting.

He's lost a finger or two and the first time he looked in a mirror he terrified himself, but Riptide reappeared during his escape and the monsters have only caught up to him a few times so he isn't doing as bad as he could be. He's not dead yet.

He steals the guy's cheeseburger when he gets up to buy a newspaper. He sees the date. It's been five weeks, maybe more. Almost a month and a half, gone.

Kronos will die. Soon.

O-O-O-O

It's when they start rebuilding the Poseidon cabin that she breaks down.

At first everyone (everyone who's able to work, that is) stares at the chunks of concrete and coral. Where do they begin? Rubble can't be put back together. And everything is rubble now.

Percy's stuff is strewn all over the place.

She smiles sadly when she sees that old picture of her in front of the monument in D.C.—she didn't know he still had it. Some of his camp shirts survived, so they set those aside to give to people whose cabins burned.

When they find the Minotaur horn (somehow intact) one of the new kids asks how he got it. Then Beckendorf, whose arm is still in a cast, tells the story of Percy showing up in the middle of the night dragging a half-dead satyr and a horn and then being sent on a quest a week later because all the gods wanted to kill him.

And even though it hurts to remember, here in his cabin—she's the reason he's dead—she can't help but laugh with them. It feels good to laugh. She tells them about the Thrill Ride of Love and then they're clutching their sides and for a moment they forget they're rebuilding a dead boy's cabin and her ribs hurt and tears are sliding down her cheeks and then she's crying for real on the floor in the rubble.

O-O-O-O

They find him just outside the city.

A few demigods and twice as many monsters show up at a bus station and he knows that today he will either die or make it to camp.

He refuses to be taken back to Kronos. He would kill himself before he'd let them recapture him. Quick, easy. Not quite painless, but better than more torture.

Cars screeching and monster growling and then dark forest and it starts raining. He runs faster and they fall behind but when he looks into the rear-view mirror of the car he's just stolen they're gaining on him.

The car runs out of gas a mile from camp.

His heart races and the monsters are too close and he sprints like he has never sprinted before, or maybe it's just more exhausting than ever because he hasn't eaten in a while.

They catch him on the hill.

A dagger slashes his chest at the same time he stabs one of the demigods and spins to slice up a hellhound. And then something pierces his shoulder. Another hellhound goes down. A demigod collapses after a strike to the helmet. Dracaenae try to net him and one of them tackles him and the monsters are _everywhere_—

And then they start disintegrating. The one of top of him explodes and he leaps up, Riptide flashing, and he sees other people and then all the enemy demigods are down and only a few monsters left and then they're sand on the wind.

The last monster has been gone for less than a second before Annabeth's arms pretty much crush him. He grins—he is _home_ he's home he's finally home—and hugs her back and then he passes out.

O-O-O-O

She's shocked he is still alive.

Scars cover every inch of his body. Some of them look like burns—she feels a fresh wave of guilt when she sees the new twisted, crumpled skin on his face—and others, definitely from blades.

Chiron heals his most recent wounds, but the scars from the lava will never go away.

He is too thin.

The camp is abuzz now—He's back! Alive! It's a miracle!—and everyone seems a little bit happier, but she just wants to know that he's going to be okay.

She's already lost him once.

O-O-O-O

White. A blurry white room. And then a flash of gold—he flinches—but he blinks and it's blonde hair and grey eyes.

Her voice is the best sound he's heard in weeks.

O-O-O-O

They realize that the fireworks never happened in the wake of the battle.

And even if they're a few weeks late, by the gods they are going to have these fireworks. They need fireworks.

Her date is scarred and still bandaged but this is the best show she has ever seen.

O-O-O-O

He visits his mom for a few days at the end of the summer. His fifteenth birthday. He explains to her boyfriend the blowfish that yes everyone thought he was dead but really he was held prisoner by an insane Titan after causing a volcanic eruption and oh by the way demigods are real.

His father shows up and makes him retell everything that's happened this summer. And then he gives him a clap on the shoulder and a bleached sand dollar which will help him somehow, someday.

Then he's just mist, blowing out the window and gone.

O-O-O-O

A few days pass quickly and then it's time for him to go back to camp. He loves his mom, but the camp needs him and he can't put her at risk anymore. He's learned this summer more than ever how dangerous being a demigod is.

His mother gives him a bag of blue cookies and only cries once he's far, far away.

O-O-O-O

She trains. He trains. They fight—monsters, enemy demigods, sometimes each other.

On a night in the winter when he's having a nightmare about the torture (again) and she catches herself thinking about how _quickly_ he could die (again), they go to the beach.

And they follow up on that kiss.

O-O-O-O

Nico, who seems to have forgiven him, has an idea.

A dangerous idea.

He accepts.

O-O-O-O

She notices something is wrong when her knife accidentally lands on him arm during practice and he doesn't bleed.

Not a scratch.

And then he tells her. He's invulnerable. Invincible. Except for right here, he says, and he puts her hand on the one spot that can kill him.

O-O-O-O

The satyrs find more demigods and there are more people at camp and they are training so hard that they all look like military school inmates and maybe, just maybe, they have a chance.

And then they remember that the other side has monsters and Titans and at least three times as many demigods.

She doesn't like their odds.

O-O-O-O

In July he explodes the cruise ship of doom. He sees his father. Beckendorf dies—yet another blow.

He learns the prophecy and thinks that after all this effort trying to stay alive, having his death foretold seventy years ago kind of sucks.

O-O-O-O

The battle starts.

Campers die.

Monsters disintegrate, but not quickly enough.

Ponies help.

Time freezes—how many days? No one knows.

Then when the time-stop ends they see the date and tomorrow he will be sixteen and he will die and the gods will win or lose.

One way or another, the war ends tomorrow.

O-O-O-O

She knows things are going badly when he slams against the throne and doesn't get up.

She rushes forward and stabs frantically, trying to find the right spot but also get through to Luke—it's not over, you can still fight him, I know you're in there—and then he slashes her arm and it _burns_ and he's _glowing_ and oh gods he's on _fire_—

Out of nowhere, he gets in a lucky stab and there's a flash of gold and it's just the two of them and a golden-eyed body.

O-O-O-O

She sees blood on his back.

O-O-O-O

He falls down, she catches him and kneels by his side.

_Hold on._

Her voice sounds pained.

_You're going to be all right._

_They'll be here soon._

Everything blurry.

_Just stay with me, okay?_

He holds her hand.

They burn away together.

O-O-O-O


End file.
